v4.3.0 made Quick Generate a real route and gave a deck one language contract. This release works on the decision surface in front of generation and the gate behind it: the confirmation UI is now a single two-stage run instead of a growing set of phases, Style joins Brand / Layout / Deck as a fourth template kind, and a passing quality report is now required before any PPTX is written.
Confirmation
- One run, two stages. The confirmation runtime is now a communication contract (Stage 1) followed by one final solution and production gate (Stage 2). Only current Stage-1 and Stage-2 artifacts with canonical result receipts are accepted, template and Strategist handoffs must be fresh so prior-run files cannot leak forward, and reopening a completed session is rejected.
- Template choice lives inside Stage 1. The separate pre-Strategist template phase is gone: the template decision is folded into the first confirmation while template content stays out of communication planning. Ordinary runs default to free design and expand selectors only when a template is actually used; the selection persists beside Stage 1 and Stage 2 is gated on the post-apply handoff.
- Production choices are server-enforced. Incomplete recommendation and final payloads are rejected, including the conditional AI-image path, and one validated recommendation snapshot is reused so a narrow concurrent rewrite cannot slip past Stage 2 validation.
- Typography reuse is a design judgment, not a quota. Repeated font pairs are allowed unless they contradict an explicitly fixed contract, and localized candidate selection is preserved when several directions share one signature. Empty custom-color validation was also clarified.
Templates
- Style is a fourth template kind. Roster-free communication methods and coordinated design defaults now have their own workspace: Create Style ships with a schema, workspace contract, validator, and discovery index, and is integrated with template application, fusion, and the flat/structured ownership boundary. Brand, Layout, and Deck are unchanged.
- A consulting decision style ships in the catalog — language-neutral, answer-first, evidence-led, encoding argument, evidence, page-role, and restrained visual guidance without locking brand or layout.
- The four JSON indexes are the complete registered library. Discovery reads only registered kind indexes; explicit roots stay exact and are installed project-locally, and Stage 2 remains responsible for application rather than choice.
Export quality gate
- A current passing final checker report is required before PPTX creation — for default, Quick, and explicit output exports alike. Non-output source overrides remain available for diagnostics, and existing projects without a report follow a documented migration path.
- Text outside the page is detected. Page-fit geometry is separated from DrawingML wrap safety: root viewBox checks use headroom-free estimates while module headroom is retained, duplicate module diagnostics are suppressed, and off-canvas Morph staging markers validate with actionable errors.
- Re-export after animation edits follows the same gate — a current matching passing report is required, and failed recovery is directed through the complete issue set, real SVG fixes, and a fresh checker run.
Topic research
- Web research is isolated from the main context. Factual fetching moves behind an artifact-based worker boundary that writes the existing research and provenance artifacts; the hand-off is validated before import and a main-context fallback is retained. Planning ownership stays in the main agent.
- The imported research is fully read. The 250-word cap applies to the worker receipt only; the active content owner reads the imported research pair in full before planning, and split-mode hints are based on what the main chat actually retained.
Generation & Quick
- Faster default planning. Ordinary free design skips template discovery entirely, shared aesthetic and numeric-leading defaults are restored with the Visual Job Router always active, Executor chooses prepared icons per page from the Strategist-curated project pool, and known required references are direct-loaded.
- Quick applies supplied templates directly. At most one exact workspace root per kind is validated and installed, free design is used when no exact root is supplied, and the Confirm UI is never started — the lockless flat export boundary is unchanged.
- Quick gets the same composition baseline. Text rhythm, natural wrapping, proximity, visual weight, and structural container use moved into the always-loaded SVG core, with transient core-message, typography, and density anchors for Quick authoring; persisted Design Spec and lock consumption stay inside the Default Executor contract.
- Quick is documented by decision rights, not by subtraction. Across README, getting-started, FAQ, roadmap, and technical design (en/zh): explicit user requirements win, only unspecified choices are decided without asking, preparation is not skipped, missing required assets still block, and the token savings land in planning rather than per-page SVG authoring. The Windows smoke test now uses quick generation.
Integrity
- Runtime attribution guard. Supported command paths now validate canonical project identity — exact author, repository URL, MIT license text, and the presence of both sponsor files (their contents may change) — failing closed through the shared CLI bootstrap and route-specific entry points, with a second independent identity check on canonical Skill metadata and LICENSE.
- Attribution preflight is part of the Skill bootstrap, and route selection stops when it fails.
Fixes & tooling
- Chat-completion image backends read images by data URI instead of a fixed 22-character slice, so any OpenAI-compatible endpoint reachable through
OPENROUTER_BASE_URLworks, with a fallback to inline message content when no images array is returned (reported by @jinhaosong-source, #247). - Local UI ports are project-aware. Port 5050 is preferred and advances only when the port is implicit; explicit ports are treated as exact and readiness is validated by service, project, and pid; visual-review servers resolve from each project's live-preview lock.
- Custom animation stays restrained — one dominant Start rhythm, entrances primary, emphasis and exit reserved for real lifecycle duties. No effect, mode, or exporter behavior was narrowed.
- Prompt budgets are fixed guardrails at 250/1000/5000-token increments rather than current-token ratchets, with Style route and load-set coverage.
Full changelog: v4.3.0...v4.4.0